The next morning, Myka woke up to find her glasses missing from their designated spot just beside her head. She checked all around her sleeping bag and backpack, checked all through the cabin. She asked the other kids about them, but no one had seen her glasses. They had disappeared.

Jack didn't let anyone leave for breakfast. "If anyone has taken Myka's glasses, you need to give them back right now. This isn't a practical joke." The kids glanced at each other or stared passively at Jack. No one fessed up. "Okay now, if anyone knows of somebody in another cabin who may have taken Myka's glasses, give me the names."

An older boy Myka was never introduced to spoke up, "Ares is still ticked off we lost the game last week."

"Ares doesn't steal," Leann said. "Beside why would they pick on a firstie?"

"Maybe it's one of the cabins who want her," said a girl still sitting on her top bunk. "You know and they're trying to steal her away bit by bit."

"By stealing her glasses first?"

Jack shook his head. "Okay look, if anyone hears anything around camp, report it back to me. Go on to the mess hall."

Leann muttered as they left, "Steal her away in pieces?"

"It could happen!" the other girl said.

Jack walked over to Myka. "Come on, we can talk to Chiron at breakfast."

Myka shook her head. She didn't want to walk around camp when she could barely see five feet in front of her.

"It'll be okay. If anyone took your glasses, Chiron will get them back."

"No, I'm not hungry. I just want to stay here."

"Okay," Jack gave in. "We'll be at the archery field today when you want to find us."

Myka nodded, and Jack left. She sat down on the floor and searched through her sleeping bag and backpack again even though she knew her glasses weren't there. She looked around the blurry room and tried not to cry. Maybe someone had put her glasses in one of the hidden slots in the walls. Myka searched every hideaway she'd found the week before, and even one she found new, but her glasses weren't in any of them.

She knocked on the back wall. "Helena?" Myka hadn't seen her with the rest of the cabin earlier. Then again, Myka never saw her with the rest of the cabin. She knocked again. "Helena?" She slid open the door when she didn't get a

response. Helena's beds were empty. She must have left the cabin before everyone had woken up. Myka wondered if Helena had taken her glasses. She had stolen her book once.

A surface examination (a close surface examination, Myka had to squint and lean in pretty near) showed no glasses on either of the desks. They could have been hidden or tucked beneath something, but that would have required

rummaging through Helena's stuff which felt wrong. Dejected, Myka returned to her corner on the floor and curled up with Treasure Island.


Pete visited after the lunch bell rang.

"You lost your glasses."

Myka nodded. "Or someone took them."

"What? Why would they do that?"

Myka shrugged. Pete sat down in front of her and held out a paper container. "I brought you food since you can't see."

Myka accepted the container and smiled. "Thanks." Inside sat barbecue, corn, a fork and a cookie all jumbled together like Pete had packed it himself. She carefully picked up the fork, licked the barbeque off the handle and started eating.

"Are you going to come out for the water-balloon fight?" Pete asked.

"There's a water-balloon fight?"

"Yeah! Shanna's putting it on," Pete said. "Which probably means she'll win. Do you know that she can breathe underwater? Isn't that cool?"

"No, but I know Demeter kids can change the colors of the trees."

"Man, I can't do anything cool like that. But Molly can. She got a cut on her finger and healed it right up in a few seconds. It was like she never cut it. I didn't know my cabin can do that, but Rebecca said our dad is also the god of medicine so I guess it makes sense."

Myka thought it was weird to hear Pete say "dad" when she knew he meant the Greek god Apollo. Very strange and weird.

"It didn't work when I tried it, though," Pete held up his finger, and Myka squinted at it. She could just make out a band-aid on the tip.

"Did you cut yourself on purpose?"

"Just a little one! I wanted to try healing it up, but I couldn't do it. I guess we don't all have the same powers."

Myka chewed another bite of food. "Do you want my cookie?"

"I already had two." But Myka suspected there was a look of longing on his face behind the blurriness. She compromised by breaking the cookie in half and giving him the piece that had sat in the barbecue sauce. He happily hummed as he munched on it.

"Mmm, barbecue and chocolate go good together."

Myka scrunched up her nose. "Gross!" Pete opened his mouth to show off the chewed up combination, and Myka was glad she was without her glasses. She giggled anyway and shoved him with her foot.

Pete asked about the water-balloon fight again before he left, but Myka declined. So he left on his own, and Myka settled back against the wall in the empty cabin.


It was a couple of hours later, and Myka was reading Treasure Island again. She would have finished the book long before now, but she was mainly staring at the pages and wishing she knew where her glasses were.

Footsteps echoed to her. Myka blinked and squinted up. She hadn't noticed the door opening.

It was Helena, or someone else with a similar height and hair color. She knelt down in front of Myka and held out something. "I found your glasses."

"Oh my gosh!" Myka grabbed them and checked them over. They looked intact and unbent. "Thank you so much! Where were they?"

"Do they work alright?"

Myka put them on. The lenses weren't scratched or smudged, nothing impaired her vision. "Yeah, they're fine. I can't believe you found them."

"But can you read with them?" Helena tapped on her book. Myka frowned down at the pages. The words looked a little funny, but they always look a little funny to her because they're scra-

The letters were in order.

Myka blinked. She stared closely at the words with panic rising inside her. Had she forgotten how to spell? Had she become too used to everything being blurry and now seeing clearly confused her? "Um..."

"It's different, isn't it?" Helena said.

Myka's eyes flitted across the page. "It's.. normal." Or what she imagined normal looked like to children who weren't dyslexic or weren't demigods, though it looked wrong and disorienting to Myka. "I.. it's right. The letters don't move. I can read it." She looked up at Helena, and it took her eyes a moment to adjust from the unmoving type to the regular world. "Did you do that?"

Helena looked nervous. "Sort of."

A burst of wind blew open the cabin door startling the two girls. Myka rose up to close it. She pushed against the door, but the wind was too strong and pushed it back open. Myka's hair whipped off her face, but the sky outside looked clear and no tree moved in the distance. "What in the world?" She squinted against the wind and walked outside to find out where it was coming from.

The wind died down immediately. Myka looked around confused. She would have thought she had imagined the wind except that kids who had been playing in the lake or walking through the cabins were looking her way and walking over.

"What was that?" She asked Helena. Helena gave her a small smile.

"Congratulations."

"What?"

Helena tilted her head. "Look up." Myka did, and her stomach jolted when she saw the golden mark of claiming floating above her head. She couldn't see it properly, but it looked like an owl.

"Is that Athena's symbol?" Nothing. "Helena?" Myka looked over to Helena for confirmation, but Helena was gone.


It didn't take long for the Athena cabin to be contacted and for the leader Grant Yorker to show up in front of Myka. Grant was old, like high-school level old at least, and he was black and tall and... yep. Very, very tall. He grinned and shook her hand. "We were hoping you were one of ours. Welcome to the family, Myka!"

He helped her carry her belongings across the field to the Athena cabin.

"Welcome to your new home away from home," Grant said as they entered. Outside, the cabin had been made of bricks, small ones like in a city, but pale like a school. It had looked old and even mossy. The inside, however, looked brand new. In the front of the cabin, sections of the walls folded out into beds, some near the ground and others lofted. When the beds were folded up, small tables could be folded out and collapsible stools were stored in a cabinet by the door. The back wall was covered in built-in cubby-holes filled with scrolls of varying ages. There was something that looked like a combination of a table and an easel that Grant explained was a drafting table. The walls glowed without any obvious source of light much like Helena's room. Myka asked about it, and Grant said a special mineral from Olympus had been infused with the wood that allowed it to glow.

"Hephaestus is the only other cabin with this kind of wall, and that's because their dad invented it." Hephaestus and part of Hermes cabin, Myka thought.

There were four other people in Athena cabin. Myka recognized Bailey Nevin and Jordan MacKenna from the mythology lessons. The other two were introduced as Kevin Santiago and Katina Long. Each member had a specialty: Grant was the camp historian, Bailey was a brilliant crafter who could bring any design to life, Jordan was an expert on theology and philosophy, Kevin was a master designer and architect ("Just don't ask him to say encyclopedia, no seriously, don't."), and Katina was the cabin's strategist and even the camp's head strategist if ever the entire camp was threatened. Myka listened to all of this, tightened her grip on her backpack straps, and tried to look like she belonged.

"There's totally more to the cabin," Bailey said, as if Myka didn't look impressed enough.

"More?" Myka glanced to the back wall. "Like I can look at the scrolls?" She was itching to finally read one for herself.

Her new cabinmates grinned. "In a minute," Bailey said. "Check this out first." She walked to certain spots and began pulling on discreet handles in the floor. First a bookcase pulled out, then another and another.

"The cabins can't ever be added on to make them bigger or taller because it would be an insult to Zeus," Bailey explained. "He always has to have the largest cabin. However, the gods don't care if we expand the cabin down into the ground, and so," she gestured at the bookcases. "Hidden library in the floor."

"Technically, we could tick off Hades if we ever built low enough to infringe upon the Underworld," Jordan said. "But it's so deep below the surface, it's not a major concern. We just can't have a hundred basement levels."

There was still more. Bailey slid all the bookcases back into the floor (Myka would be lying if she said she wasn't sad to see all those books disappear below the floorboards). Then, Grant pulled on a handle in the center of the cabin floor and brought up a large table folded in half. As it was unfolded and set-up properly, Myka could see it was a model of a forest complete with elevation changes and a stream cutting through the middle.

"Is this the forest in camp?"

"Yep," Katina said. "Every tree, every rock, every hill - all measured and laid out to scale. We use it to plan for Capture the Flag every week." The table also had drawers that stored figures to represent campers from the other cabins and blue and red flags. Myka thought she could study the table for hours and not be bored. Bailey laughed.

"Look at how her face has lit up. I love saving the war table for last."

"So," Grant said, "what were you doing when you were claimed? Since we missed it."

"Yeah, thanks for waiting for us, Mom," Bailey muttered.

"Um." Myka didn't think she'd been doing anything special at the time, but she described the burst of wind that lured her outside.

"But what were you doing just before the wind?" Jordan asked. "We record everyone's claiming to help us identify the new Athena demigods when they come in. Some demigods are easy to spot right away, but our cabin is… more difficult to peg."

"Subtle," Katina said. "I prefer subtle."

"So we usually have to wait until the claiming to take the new ones under our wings," Jordan finished. "So any details you can give us would be helpful."

"Oh," Myka said. "Well, Helena had just found my glasses and given them back to me."

"Your glasses?" Bailey held out her hand. "May I see them?"

Myka didn't want to be separated from her glasses again so soon after getting them back, but in one sense, these people were her siblings, so she surrendered her glasses for Bailey to examine. Bailey took a couple of minutes to look them over.

"She's checking to see if they were blessed," Grant explained.

"And they definitely were," Bailey said. "These are not normal glasses anymore. Have you noticed anything different in your sight yet?"

"Reading. The words in my book didn't scramble anymore."

"Really?" Bailey picked up a book off one of the fold-out tables and looked at it through Myka's glasses. "Holy smokes that's weird."

"What? What does it look like?" Kevin crowded next to Bailey while the others craned their heads, but stayed put.

"Just like she said, the words aren't scrambled," Bailey said. She asked Myka, "May I try it without the lenses?"

"Um."

"Don't worry, I won't break them. I'll be able to put them right back together."

"She will," Grant said. "It'll be okay."

So Myka allowed Bailey to dismantle her glasses and look through the frames only. The result was the same: the words didn't scramble like they were all accustomed to. But remove the frames, and the dyslexia was right back.

"That's pretty cool," Bailey said, handing back Myka's reassembled glasses. "And it's good that it's the frames that are blessed. If you ever get contacts, you can just keep the frames for reading."

"Not as handy as a blessed sword or knife," Katina said.

"That's what you said about my blessed pen," Kevin said.

"And your pen isn't as handy either."

"It can draw my thoughts without me even having to touch it. How is that not useful?"

Grant let them argue and took the opportunity to show Myka which bed was hers so she could put her backpack down. She was still in the front of the cabin and the bed was low to the ground, but it had a real mattress. No sheets, though. Grant said they keep pooling money to go buy sheets, but then they find new books or drafting supplies and buy that instead. They used their sleeping bags in place of real sheets and used double-stick velcro to prevent the sleeping bag from slipping off the slick camp mattresses. After her bed was set up, they still had an hour before dinner. Grant decided it was a good time to get Myka fitted for a sword. Apparently the ones in the armory were for practice, and when demigods were claimed, they got to be fitted with better weapons that would belong only to them. Jordan and Katina tagged along, claiming Grant wouldn't know a good sword from a tree branch since he preferred fighting with a spear.

The cache of "official" weapons was in the forge where, as Grant explained, the Hephaestus cabin could keep a better watch over it. Inside the storeroom were racks and racks of weapons on display like a general store. The older ones walked right in and began examining the swords hanging on the wall.

"Wait, you're twelve, right?" Grant asked.

"Eleven."

"Hmm," Grant hummed while seeming to size up her height. There was some discussion between the three, each pointing at different swords. Grant said something that made Jordan groan "I know!". Myka took the time to observe the knives hanging to her right. There was a particularly nasty looking one with a deeply serrated edge and a small hook on the end.

Finally, Katina exclaimed, "Ah, look at this beauty!" She held up something tiny that looked nothing like a sword. "I don't know who Hephaestus cabin thought they were saving this for by tucking it behind those katanas, but we are taking it."

Myka walked closer. "That looks like a stick." It wasn't any larger than an ink pen.

Katina smiled. "That's what makes it beautiful. It's based off another sword."

"Anaklusmos," Grant said. "Or Riptide in today's English."

"Exactly," Katina said. "Riptide can shrink down into what looks like an ordinary ink pen. Uncap it and it extends into the full sword."

"It also can never be lost," Jordan said. "If you're disarmed or separated from Riptide, it will show up in your pocket a few seconds later."

"But this sword isn't magical like Riptide, is it?" Grant asked.

"No," Katina said. "Obviously, we couldn't duplicate that, but.." She backed away from them and then pressed something on the stick and it sprang into a full sword. She held it out in the air and then balanced it on her hand. "Emmy must have forged this herself. It's perfect!" She grinned at Myka. "Come on, let's go outside and try it out."

They let Myka swing the sword for a bit, and then they took her to the armory to let her try landing hits with it. Myka had thought the armory swords had felt good, but swinging this one felt more natural than walking. She was surprised by how sturdy it was. It didn't look or feel anything like a collapsible sword, yet with a press of the button on the hilt, it swiftly folded up into a small cylinder. She was breathless when she finished testing it.

"That was amazing!"

The other three all smiled. "Looks like we found your sword, then," Grant said. Jordan and Katina cheered.


Myka searched the Hermes table for Helena during dinner, but, as usual, she wasn't there. Pete was though, and after they were done eating, he ran over to her.

"You're in Athena now? That's so cool!" Pete said. "Everyone says that's the really smart cabin cause Athena is the goddess of wisdom. Do you like it?"

"I love it! They have bookcases that pop out of the floor!"

Pete started fake snoring like he'd fallen asleep. Myka frowned and punched his shoulder. "Meanie!" He laughed.

"You're a nerdy god."

"Demigod," Myka corrected.

"You still got it from your mom."

And her dad owned a bookstore and had read almost every book ever written, so she'd probably gotten some of it from him too. Wait… how did that work? Myka decided she didn't want to know and shoved all musings on gods' relationships with mortals away. Far, far away.

"Do wanna come play or are you going to hang out with her new cabin?" Pete asked.

"Huh? Oh." Myka looked back to her cabin and then looked across to Apollo's. "I'm, I'll hang out here. At my cabin."

"Okay, see ya later." She watched Pete walk back to his cabin. He was probably going to play in the lake again. Or hang out with his siblings. There were a lot of scrolls she could look through. And a lot of books that she could read without pausing to untangle a word.

Her eyes flicked from the Apollo cabin down to Hermes cabin. She needed to thank Helena properly for finding her glasses. Maybe she was in her room.

Myka felt uneasy upon entering the Hermes cabin. She hadn't even slept at her new home, and she already felt out of place here. She walked back to Helena's door and knocked.

"I'm busy and have no desire to be interrupted," Helena said through the wall.

Myka blinked. "I.. I just wanted to say thank you for finding my glasses."

"You already thanked me."

Myka fidgeted. "I'm in Athena cabin now."

"I know."

"They have glowing walls like you do."

"I know."

Myka searched for something to say. "Have you heard of the sword Riptide? They gave me a sword that's collapsible like it."

"You do not have Riptide," Helena cut in.

"No, I know. But they said it's similar."

"Myka, I'm busy. Would you please come back later?"

"Oh." Myka's chest felt heavy. "Okay. I'm sorry."


Myka trained with her new cabin. The day after her claiming, the camp played Capture the Flag again. This time, Myka's side consisted of Athena, Poseidon, Ares, and Dionysus cabins, and Myka was clued in to her team's strategy. Her job was to scout on their side of the creek for the other team sneaking through via a route they hadn't anticipated. Bailey gave her a bronze disk about the size of a half-dollar. If she spotted an ambush, she was supposed to press a button in the middle and it would send the disk spinning into the air and shoot out red sparks.

"I got the idea from Harry Potter," Bailey said. "We may not have magic wands, but we still have demigod ingenuity, right?"

Myka grinned.

Unfortunately, she didn't get to use Bailey's warning system during the game. The only ambush she found was a lone Apollo boy. He was a sword-fighter too (surprisingly), and more experienced, but his instincts didn't seem as strong as Myka's. When he saw he wouldn't get around her easily, he retreated.

Later in her scouting, she caught a glimpse of black hair and pale skin darting between trees. "Helena?" Myka rushed after her. The girl halted and spun around. It was definitely Helena. "Helena, hey. Hi. What.. what are you doing?"

Helena stared for a moment, not responding, and then she took off running again. Myka followed, forgetting they were on different teams and only feeling hurt at being ignored. The chase took her up a hill. As she crested the top, she lost Helena's trail. She searched all around, but Helena had entirely disappeared.


"Who's Helena?" Pete asked as they talked after the game.

"Helena Wells, the girl who lives in the back of Hermes cabin."

Pete crinkled his forehead. "Leann?"

"No, not the bunks," Myka said. "I mean behind the back wall."

"What?"

"She's the girl who threw knives at me during sword practice."

"Oh! Helena's that person?" Pete said. "And you wanna know why she doesn't like you?"

Myka nodded. "I think she's mad at me."

"Well, if she threw knives at you, then she's a jerk," Pete said.

"She wasn't trying to be mean."

"She threw knives at you and isn't talking to you. That's mean."

"But she found my glasses for me," Myka said. Pete considered this piece of evidence, and then gave a clueless shrug. Myka sighed.


Saturday was a big day for Myka.

She stood before the back wall of Athena's cabin, eyes scanning over the cubbyholes, and hummed.

Today was the day she got to read the scrolls.

"I'd like to read about claiming, please."

Grant chuckled. "That's most people's first pick. Those scrolls are over here." He directed her to a cubbyhole in the second row from the right near Myka's waist. It contained four scrolls that Myka carefully picked up and brought over to a table. She'd already pulled a stool out from the cabinet.

"Just a warning," Grant said as she went to unroll the first one. "Reading about claiming won't give you any insight into how to make contact with the gods. The gods have to be careful about when they speak with their demigod children. Mom's not any different. She'll only contact you when she needs to, and it probably won't be in person. But she does love us. Remember that she blessed your glasses."

Myka flicked her fingertip against the paper edge of the scroll. "Okay. Um, I just wanted to read about the symbols."

Grant smiled. "Okay. Have fun." He patted her shoulder and moved to another table to work on his own business.

Myka took a minute to dive into the scrolls. She really had never considered speaking Athena as a person - as her mom. Athena was a Greek goddess and still only the stuff of stories despite everything Myka had seen at the camp. Talking to her was just - unfeasible. But if it was possible...

Myka flicked the thought away. She didn't want to speak to Athena. She wanted to read about claiming. She unrolled the first scroll and started doing just that.

Myka had tired of sitting by the third scroll and had moved to her bed to sprawl out. So far she had learned every god's symbol for claiming, what happens when a god claims multiple children at once, and the frequency each god claims their demigods. The minor gods were the slowest at claiming their children with the average wait time of two years. Hermes was the fastest at claiming his children with everyone being claimed in their first summer at camp, and the majority being claimed their first week. The reason for this, as suggested by Athena children years earlier, was Hermes being the god of travel made him more aware of the demigods movements and he was clued in sooner to when they arrived at camp. Myka had also discovered that Hephaestus was the most scattered when it came to siring demigods and claiming them. His children usually found their way to camp in batches every 30 years or so. The suggested explanation for this phenomenon was Hephaestus would become too focused on a personal project in his forge and ignore the mortal world until it was finished. Then he would resurface for a break before the next project. Basically interacting with the mortal world and creating demigod children was his form of vacation. Myka raised her eyebrow at this. The gods were weird.

Athena had no special note about her claims. She usually prompt with her claims. She had enough children to always have a handful at camp every summer. She didn't have any weird trends.

Myka's mind drifted back to what Grant had said about talking to the gods. The concept felt odd. Gods weren't for talking to in normal conversations. Gods were who you prayed to when you really wanted something or were in serious trouble. You asked for their help. You didn't chat with them. Even if you did, Myka didn't have anything she wanted to talk to Athena about.

Did she have something to pray about? Being claimed? Dear Athena, thank you for claiming me. ... Thank you for blessing my glasses. Even though reading was still weird with them. It would take some time to adjust to the words not being jumbled up. And hopefully the headaches would go away too. Myka rubbed her temple. She'd had headaches when she first got glasses until her eyes adjusted. Maybe this was the same thing. Hopefully, anyway. At least she knew those nights of silently crying in her room over her homework would disappear. Now she'd be able to find her spelling mistakes without the shame of asking for help. The headache might be worth it for that trade-off. Thank you again for blessing my glasses.

She wondered how blessings worked. Was it necessary for her glasses to go missing for half a day beforehand? Couldn't Athena bless them from afar instead of stealing them?

Myka stood up to search the cubbyholes again. If they had scrolls on claiming, surely they had scrolls on blessed items too. It only took a few minutes for Myka to discover that yes, they did have scrolls on blessed items, and they were stored two shelves above the claiming ones. She carted them over to her bed to read.

Apparently, blessed items simply had a way of showing up amongst the demigod's possessions. Or it was passed along through Chiron. As far as Myka could see, the gods didn't have to steal items in order to bless them. So why had her glasses disappeared?

.

Oh.

.

Myka looked up towards the door in the direction that Hermes cabin would be if the wall didn't block her view. Helena had taken her glasses. To have them blessed? That seemed as uncommon and unlikely as a god stealing demigod possessions, but it made more sense than Athena taking them.

The lunch bell rang. Myka returned the scrolls to their rightful cubbyholes and came to a decision. She may not be able to set up a conversation with a god, but she could track down Helena.